My Simple Living...

Over at Rhonda Jean's blog she is encouraging us to write about our simple lives, so here is my story:

I was raised on a large farm on the far West Coast of South Australia and could not have wished for a better life. My parents have always been happy to live frugal and are now in their retirement.

I have inherited many of my parents' qualities by not spending money I dont have on unnecessary things. If I need something, I save the money until I have enough to purchase. At the moment I am looking at a new lounge suite (old one has had its day). I have never owned a new lounge before, have always had second-hand. Most of our belongings are second-hand. We have a mortgage but are trying our best to pay it off as quickly as possible. This is the only debt we have.

I will have to live very simply from now on as I have decided to take a break from working (as a home daycare provider) as my eldest daughter has moved back home for awhile after living in Adelaide for ten years. I found taking a break to be the best option so I do not become too stressed over everything. This way I can cope with all that I need to do without putting myself under pressure.

We live on a 2.5 acre (1 ha) block and grow our own vegetables, as well as having planted plenty of fruit trees. We have a french drain that waters our fruit trees; a french drain runs underground, and rather than transporting household grey water to a treatment plant, it flows onto our back lot and from this the fruit trees and grape vines we have planted benefit. I will blog further about this at a later date.

Our fruit trees include orange, mandarine, lemon, olives, mulberry, nectarine, apricot, grapefruit and grape vines. We also have chooks for our own use (eggs), and sell our surplus eggs for profit. We are looking at getting more chooks as we have plenty of people wanting to buy our eggs - people are attracted to the thought of free-range, organic produce at a reasonable price.

I am cooking from scratch when possible. I have had a bit of an issue thinking of things to make for a vegetarian daughter, but thanks to the many bloggers out there who love to share there recipes I have discovered a valuable resource.

When doing the grocery shopping I buy generic brands where possible. I use my re-usable shopping bags, look for specials and keep a stockpile. Any excess fruit and veg that we grow we turn into preserves, jams, sauces etc. I purchase only what we cannot grow.

For cleaning I use bi-carb soda and vinegar. I knit my own dishcloths, and soon I hope to make my own washing machine liquid using Rhonda Jean's recipe. I use cold water to wash clothes and they are all line-dried (I do not own a dryer). We have a spare clothesline under the verandah for the rare occasion that it is raining.

Our house is heated by a wood fire; hubby collected wood all year from different resources for our winter stockpile. He collects trees cut down by the council and left on the side of the road and asks our friends not to throw away any wood suitable for burning. He also offers to chop trees that need felling.

I save fuel by not going into town unnecessarily. I make sure I have several errands to do before heading off to the shops. It is a 7km drive so it doesnt take love for the fuel to disappear. I try to make do with whatever I have when I find that I have run out of something. It would be nice to be able to walk to the shops sometimes.

Entertainment-wise, we dont go out all that much and we dont drink alcohol or smoke. This saves a lot of money.

We have also recently installed solar power, and hopefully in July we will get some money back for putting power back into the grid. Wind generators will be our next venture. We also have four large rainwater tankls around our house to collect the little rain we get. Due to severe water restrictions this has come in handy for watering the gardens. We have not had rain here since before Christmas. The dirt has turned to bulldust - it is like talcum powder at the moment.

This is a summary of my simple life; please refer to earlier posts and posts to come for more information and pictures.

Regards,

Tania

Critters

Hello again,

It's been a while since I was last here. The weather has been terrible. Today our temperature is 42 degrees Celsuis (108 F) and we are in the middle of a record breaking heat wave. It has been hot all last week and this coming week is going to be the same with temperatures forcast for 40 degrees (104 F) every day until next Saturday. eeeekkk! I suppose it is good for the solar power though, not so good for me. No rain in sight for a while, so the drought continues on.

The following pictures are of some visitors I have had recently.

It would appear that this certain chook has taken a liking to us humans.
She is standing at the door getting some cool air from the air conditioning in the heat.
This is her favourite spot for laying her eggs. Poor thing is puffing showing how hot it is here. I collect one egg a day from this little cubby house located outside under a shaded area.


Another visitor taking a break from the heat. This Wanderer butterfly landed on the screen door to get some cool air.

A very thirsty lizard. See the tongue.

This is known a Shingleback lizard. Similar to the blue tongue lizard (I call them "sleepy lizards") This one wandered in while I was watering.

Having a drink, you can see his tongue if you look hard.

Standing in the water.

Having a look around for any dangers.

It is Adelaide Cup day tomorrow and it is going to be very hot. The race has been delayed until later in the afternoon. In South Australia we get a public holiday for this event. We have a short week for the next three weeks, due to public holidays including Easter.

Enjoy your Sunday.

Cheers,

Tania

Gone Solar

*I have edited this page as I had the wrong information about the solar panels.

Our solar system has 24 Kaneka 80 watt panels in parallel producing 1.9kw. It is coupled to an Outback Mx60 MPPT Regulator. Our inverter is a Xantrex 4548, set up with four, 12 volt, 100 amp batteries. Phil has it set up to sell excess power from the solar panels and batteries to the grid. He is currently in the process of asking lots of questions on what type of wind turbine to purchase.

Panels
A closer look

Some spare batteries he has scored.

Four solar batteries

The setup in our shed

Xantrex Inverter

New meter in meter box.

All the best

Tania

Daily Living

Sunset taken from hubby's train, snapped somewhere out west.

Bird of Paradise trying to survive in my somewhat dying garden. It breaks my heart to see my plants withering away because of the lack of water. I spent years getting it to look nice only to have it destroyed by severe water restrictions.

We have a salt lake directly behind us. When it rains it looks like a nice lake with water, the rest of the time it is bone dry.

Thyme and Oregano, these are mainly watered with dish water.

I do not own a dishwasher, so this is how I wash my dishes. First, I run the hot tap into the bucket pictured, this is used for rinsing. (Our hot water is solar and takes a while to get hot when running the tap). When the water starts to warm I then run this into the other square container to which an earth friendly detergent has been added. As you can see I don't use very much water, depending on the amount of dishes of course, if there is only a few I use very little. I wash dishes at lunch time and after tea (dinner). I used about six litres of water all up this time around. When this cools down I put it onto the herb garden.

Neighbours house with wind generator, situated across the road from us.

I couldn't help but capture this evening shadow coming through my laundry window yesterday on sundown.

Have a blessed Sunday.

Tania

Lamp Lighting Time

Last night was our first night with solar powered lighting. I found myself thinking I was wasting the power in the batteries when I turned on a light, so I decided to get out the old lamps and spent the evening with the two lamps gently burning.
There has been a lot of cackling noises coming from the chook house of late. The reason being is pictured above. Our new hens have started laying, so there are plenty of eggs at the moment. I have included a larger egg that belongs to the old girls and the smaller ones are from the younger girls.

A couple of my attempts at crafting. I made these a few years ago now, don't get the time these days. Once a month I used to sell some of my goods at a local market. The "kitchen closed" cow was very popular.

Hope you have had a wonderful day.

Tania

I'm Back

Let the sunshine in.

Hello again,

The weeks have flown by since I was last here. I had good intentions of returning sooner but life got in the way.

I am now busy again caring for little ones while their parents are working. My work load is a little easier than I thought it was going to be because I didn't get the baby that required 45 hours a week care. Instead I have a dear little 18mth old starting.

Pictures of some of the Day Care area, not very tidy when this was taken because they had just finished playing here. Top one is the shaded area and below is the playground area, includes sandpit, swings, slippery dip and climbers.

Today we were hooked up to Solar Power. At the moment it is only our lights that are running from the system. Hopefully in the future we will be able to run more than just lights. We are looking into buying a wind generator next.

Best wishes until next time.

Tania

Chooks

This is a pic of our chooks. We have restocked our flock because some of the older ones died or became victims of a fox. We have had to fox proof their pen so they are safer. There are eight new girls, two new roosters and three older girls that are still laying, just. The new hens aren't laying yet. I love home grown eggs, the bought ones don't even come close. The best part is that I know what goes into our eggs by what we feed them. As you can see it is pretty dry here at the moment, not a blade of grass in sight. When we first moved here the enclosure was overgrown with weeds, so much so we couldn't even walk through it hardly. Now it is just dirt.

View of my kitchen sink.

(Sorry it's a bit dark).

I have spent the last couple of days cleaning the house in preparation of my friend's arrival tomorrow night.

Things will be a bit quiet around here for a few days as I spend some quality time with my best friend. We have been friends for over 26 years and it will be great to catch up again.